So does anybody have inside information about the state of Ernie B's? My inbox has been getting hit with 50% coupons for weeks (which I've ignored) then today I get a 60% coupon ($150 minimum). I'm intrigued so I make my way to his website thinking I can patch some holes in my collection. But he has NOTHING. I knew he was curtailing stocking new releases but this surprised me -

Wanted to grab some Pressure Sounds - NothingWanted to grab some Soul Jazz Studio One - NothingWanted to grab some Twinkle Bros - 3 used 7"Wanted to grab some Prince Far I - Nothing

In desperation I searched the Greensleeves back catalog and guess what - Nothing but several used 12". Heck, you can't even get Toots' Funky Kingston from Ernie, on any format! The only things he seems to have are a bunch of Heartbeat cassettes that are going for full price. Who is going to buy a bunch of cassettes at $10 a pop? What is this 1989?

It looks like a fire sale to me with a shuttering of the business not too far behind. But that is just a guess.

"Touch them magically with the rod of melody, We will never let them go" Roy Shirley, Touch Them

It’s been clear that he is winding the business down for awhile. He stopped adding new stock around May and has been slowing increasing the discounts since then. At this point all he really has left are (still) overpriced used titles and lots and lots of dreck (he literally can’t give away all those JetStar titles he bought up a decade ago)

Very sad to see the way things are going - been noticing an increasing amount of gift card promotions coming through but then very little left in stock worth ordering. Things started going downhill when he took the focus away from reggae, I had no problem with that per se at first but many of the quality labels have been vanishing from his inventory for some time leaving a lot of C and D list rock stuff. Been ordering since the 90's (the catalogue book days, wish I still had those), but not very often anymore, I would have ordered more back then if I knew this was coming...

While I would really like to take advantage of the $180 off on a $300 order offer, I had great trouble getting even a $75 order (with $25 discount) together less than a month ago. It's sad to see they are closing down...

But if you went there looking for Pressure Sounds or Soul Jazz Studio One you can't have visited the site for several years, because it is a very long time since there were any of those for sale.

I've read a few posts on other forums that are saying EB's Records is about to close down? A few years back he seemed to be stocking loads of cassette tapes? Are these making a comeback ??

Such a shame he couldn't stick just with reggae, as things seemed to go downhill when he became EB Records .I would still have been spending money with him over these last few years if he had only refunded me for a $15.00 damaged record.......

j j wrote:A few years back he seemed to be stocking loads of cassette tapes? Are these making a comeback ??

I am pretty sure the cassette you see there now are part of warehouse clearance, he has been listing lots of old stock Heartbeat, RAS etc. over the last year or so (mainly cut-out CDs), and I guess the cassettes are the ones that have been left from that.

Such a shame he couldn't stick just with reggae, as things seemed to go downhill when he became EB Records .

It possibly would have gone downhill even faster if he had stuck with Reggae, it seemed the branching out was an attempt to improve business, which obviously didn't help enough. I think he had some good stuff from other genres, especially specialist labels like Bear Family, Ace, BGO, Repertiore, etc., which were sold at competitive prices, but I guess that "audience" may not have found their way there. So in that sense maybe he should have stuck with catering to his Reggae customers which maybe were more loyal, but again probably not loyal enough, as it were...

His new stock has certainly dwindled in the last few months but he has still been getting new stock from dub store records, digikiller, greensleeves/vp, etc. etc. until the last few weeks anyway. He has sent out discount codes for the last four years or so that I've held a wholesale account, so I wouldn't read too much into that, although the 50% and 60% off codes in the last week feels unprecedented.

I certainly hope he isn't going out of business. Their customer service, reliability, shipping packaging, and selection of titles (until the last few weeks anyway) are the absolute best in the reggae mail-order world.

I actually liked it when they branched out to stock some non-reggae items. I enjoy plenty of non-reggae music too, and I have appreciated being able to add additional items to my orders. That said, these appear to have slipped in quality recently.

Obviously the rising international postage costs haven't helped, although I've found his discount codes often offset that. UK retailers like honest jons and juno have maintained relatively low international postage costs, probably helped by the 20% sales tax which is included in the cost of every item, but not applicable for non-european sales. Ernie has always maintained some of the lowest prices, so he doesn't have the option of not passing the increased postage costs to the customer. With those low prices, his margins must be so tight and to his credit he hasn't compromised his customer service, reliability or quality of packaging.

So it's not looking great, but I can't imagine it's a party for anyone trying to sell reggae these days. It will be a loss if ernie b's isn't in business.

Why should it matter how many times/items you return if they are actually faulty?

as I continue to say " I have NEVER taken advantage of EB's return policy in any way shape or form".

thank you

j j

This is a high fault rate.

Even with the discount vouchers EB sends out i doubt there are much orders because you have to spend 50 or 100 dollars first to be able to use the discount voucher. Then if you ordered so many records the shipping ends up costing more then the value of the records.

Especially for postage to the UK so is not good at all. This has been situation for good few years now.Is same situation even if you have no discount voucher.

If you order minimal amount of records again the shipping is nearly double the cost of the records. Then you might get lumbered with taxes to pay due to high cost or even low cost of records.

Now after so many years this Seems like a scam farce and joke.

Last edited by jah_vaults on Sat Oct 28, 2017 4:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Why should it matter how many times/items you return if they are actually faulty?

as I continue to say " I have NEVER taken advantage of EB's return policy in any way shape or form".

thank you

j j

This is a high fault rate.

yeah but i find that to be such an exaggeration--either that or jj just has REALLY bad luck.

i ordered for years and years from ernie, my early orders being $500-$800 a pop quite often (often enough that ernie asked me if i was a record store). in all the years of buying x amount of pieces from him, i only had 3 problem items. three, out of thousands--and that's the truth. and all 3 times ernie replaced the product and told me not to bother returning the faulty item.

j j wrote:Over the decades I have spent thousands & thousands of dollars with EB's & to have this policy change over a US$14.00 refund seems a little over the top. I have always offered to return faulty items to him as proof that they are actually damaged or faulty & he has always declined my offer (I would pay the return postage also)

j j

which probably means you also made tens of thousands with reselling that stuff... so who gives a hoot about a few trashed records ?

I used to buy from him regularly, but over the last couple of years every time I look to buy a new release he rarely has it in stock, which sends me to other online vendors (or straight to the labels themselves). I still make the effort to check, since so much of my reggae/dub collection has come from his shop and I was grateful to be able to find especially imports at such a good prices way back when, but the pickings have just gotten slimmer and slimmer to the point of non-existence. This seems to have started around the time he stopped selling Pressure Sounds stuff, which has been bad for him *and* for PS, since I used to buy basically everything they put out because his prices were so good. Now I'm selective about which PS releases I get, which means I only buy roughly a third of what I used to from their catalog.